Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Scott Walker didn't buy the election

Now that the votes have been counted and the effort to remove Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a dismal failure, I'm seeing an excuse by union supporters that Walker bought the election by raising nearly eight times as much campaign money as opponent Tom Barrett.

People come with all sorts of excuses when things don't go their way to avoid coming to terms with an uncomfortable truth. Walker was able to get the vote of 38 percent of union households, and 18 percent of his voters told exit pollsters they plan to vote for Barack Obama in the presidential race. Clearly, Walker was about to draw votes from the left to win. Does that mean those supporters were brainwashed with political ads.

When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

The lefties who believe the Wisconsin election was purchased should sit down and ask themselves if that same effect was in place in 2008 when Barack Obama outspent John McCain by three to one. Does that mean they themselves were brainwashed into voting for a candidate they would normally reject?